Dog Food thrown in hole with plants?

I picked up a load of dog food at a shipper in Kansas City, KS the other day. Around the inside perimeter of the complexes chain link fence someone had a garden, quite a large one all together.

After getting the load and heading out the gate to leave I remembered a dozen years back where someone had mentioned using dog food in the bottom of their plant hole when transplanting new plants to the garden. I think I even tried it but being out on the road doing construction work I forgot about using it, till being at this pet food manufacturer.

My question to any of you, have you tried this? Done any side by side comparisons with plants that don't get the dog food?

I found this link(there's tons of other links at google on this). The various forum guest discuss the good, the bad and the ugly of it: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/flgard/msg0620461730497.html?30

MIke

Super interesting. I have never heard of this idea before.. I think I am leaning towards what one of the people on that other forum said about there being much healthier alternatives to getting those other nutrients than dog food and cat litter.. But still, interesting idea..

Has anyone on here tried this?

Dog food can have a lot of preservatives that might prevent soil growth or plant growth. Pre-composting the food using bokashi and then applying it would be more idea as the preservatives would get broken down outside of the growth area. This will also prevent animals from digging to get at the food. Also I believe their is salt added which can load up over time in the soil.

I put little cat food in a bag of carbon (paper/cardboard/paper bag) and bury that in some soil. The carbon binds helps to bind up the scent and soak up excess nutrients.

Rather than dogfood, has anyone considered rabbit pellets or livestock alfalfa pellets? Seems like a cheaper and better alternative to dogfood.

That's an interesting question. I've heard people talk about dog manure for compost and issues with that but never considered dog food for the soil building.

You know, when I lived in S. America there was no dog food. The dogs just ate what we ate. All the dinner scraps went into a pot that we boiled and sometimes (if there weren't many leftovers) we'd thicken it with rice and that's what went into the dog bowls. They loved it and did very well on this diet. I know that doesn't help with the OP's question but it may be food for thought for some human/canine communities out there.